The next speaking engagement is on Thursday, at Durham. This is an interesting event, in that it is a meeting of the Aberystwyth-Lancaster Graduate Colloquium, but being held in Durham. The last one was held in Manchester, so it is clearly breaking out of any narrow sense of its geography. It’s also being held in the Geography department, and I think has always previously been hosted by politics departments. One of our Durham postgraduates, Emily Jackson, has organised it, and she asked me, my colleague Ben Anderson and long-standing friend of the department Mick Dillon to speak. Mick was my PhD external examiner in 1999 and he’s one of the people that never ceases to inspire me when I see him.

Of course, the main event and key purpose is the postgraduate presentations, and there are several really interesting looking papers. I’ve met some of the presenters before at various events and of course know some from Durham.